SECOND COMING

These are the pretenders that took inspiration from icons and ran with it – but to what level of success? The Classic Cars team has a retro-modern round-table

MERCEDES AMG SLS

PRODUCTION EDITOR JOE BREEZE SAYS ‘The thing that strikes me about the 2010 SLS – the first ground-up design from Mercedes-amg – is that it didn’t try too hard to lean on its ancestor’s reputation. Those with an interest in classic machinery instantly identify it as a spiritual successor to 1955’s 300SL, but it was also fresh and exciting enough for phone-wielding teens to chase them down Knightsbridge.

‘It had the Gullwing doors – no longer the necessity of its body design, perhaps rather a retort to other dramatic exotica from Lamborghini, Ferrari, Mclaren and Koenigsegg. It had the beautiful long bonneted, rounded-rump proportions of the SL too, but by 2010 this was merely a longrunning theme of Mercedes GTS. The single bar grille was also an obvious reference, but the overall shape could be found elsewhere in the Mercedes range, so it didn’t look at odds with it contemporary stablemates either.

‘In my opinion, the SLS AMG is a design great in its own right, and that’s down to both the purity and attention-to-detail in its design, and the restraint it used with respect – in both senses of the word – to the 300SL. Quite tellingly, in a period interview with its designer Mark Fetherston, he cited airplanes, fighter jets, sharks and even cats as his primary inspirations – and ‘respect for things that have been done in the past’ was as close as he gave to a 300SL namedrop.

‘Various design awards validate that this wasn’t just Mercedes leaning on its past glory; it was just striving for timelessness... again.’